| This is the watchdog package for Fedora. It implements a userspace |
| daemon which periodically pings (usually hardware) to tell the |
| hardware that the machine is alive. If the hardware times out without |
| receiving a ping, it assumes userspace is dead and reboots the |
| machine. |
| |
| There are several major classes of watchdog available: |
| |
| - watchdog hardware implementing the Linux /dev/watchdog API |
| |
| * drivers in /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/watchdog/ |
| * http://lxr.linux.no/linux/Documentation/watchdog/watchdog-api.txt |
| |
| - softdog |
| |
| * software watchdog (just runs inside the kernel) |
| * implements the Linux /dev/watchdog API |
| * won't help you if the kernel fails (obvious, right?) |
| |
| - IPMI |
| |
| * a heavyweight standard for all things server-management |
| * separate Linux driver |
| * ipmitool to control it |
| * see README.watchdog.ipmi for how to use this daemon together |
| with IPMI |
| |
| You can also use watchdogs inside recent QEMU/KVM virtual machines. |
| When running qemu, specify "-watchdog i6300esb" on the qemu command |
| line (or use libvirt). Inside the guest, the i6300esb watchdog driver |
| should automatically load and provide you with a Linux /dev/watchdog- |
| compatible API. |
| |
| - Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com) 2009-02-26 |
